THE BAKERS

In an interview with one of the freedom fighters, he said something interesting to me: Every person living in Art sakh during the war was a fighter. This thought precipitated within me. And I have seen a fighter in everyone who has lived in those times since that day.

I know Grandmother Angela since 2000, when she worked in kindergarten. And I was not surprised when I inquired about the women bakers of the war years and read her name among the six bakers in the district. It turned out that two of them are alive today - Angela Jamalyan and Anya Khanazaryan. I met them. My interlocutors shared stories about distant but fresh and memorable days.- We baked pies under the ‘restaurant’ and distributed them to the demonstrators. We tried to express our participation and help in this way. And then, when they needed it, we helped with whatever we could, "says Angela Jamalyan." It all started with one incident. It is said that they brought tandoor bread for Avo; he ate it and liked it very much. Avo jokingly said that our soldiers would not go home if they ate that bread. We lived in the same street with aunt Ashken. One day she said, "Come out, I have something to say." And she said that her son Slavik (then a district governor) instructed to gather five women to start baking bread. It was Avo's order, the boys needed bread. It was not difficult to get together, and all the women in our neighborhood were baking bread. Six women united. We formed a group of bakers: Ashkhen Hayrapetyan, Haykanush Aghabekyan, Jenya Isakhanyan, Anya Khanazaryan, Angela Soghomonyan and I. In 1992, on March 3, we baked our first bread. At 3 pm we went to knead the dough and hand-picked the water from the kindergarten yard. There was a well in the Khanazaryan’s yard, but after extracting 3-4 buckets of water, it became muddy. So we carried water from the yard of the nearby kindergarten. We used to bake 600-650 loaves daily. Two of us were kneading the dough, and the other four were baking daily. We lived in the cellars, because the city was subjected to bombing and shelling round the clock. At 6-7 pm we were already burning the tandoor. It was a full-time job. We were baking leavened bread and, imagine, they were very beautiful and tasty. We were also surprised. If we had just kneaded the dough at home with that flour, it would have remained in the oven. Perhaps we were baking for our fighting boys, of course, God was helping us. We worked with great pleasure. Our sons were in positions. We didn't think about the housekeeping, our minds were with the boys and in our work. One was kneading the dough, the other was making the balls, carrying them to the tandoor, and the baker was baking. During those months, we never stopped baking bread and considered it our most important job. We gathered whatever we had and sent to the positions."There was no water at that time; there was no tandoor in everyone's yard." In this sense, our home was very comfortable. When we set up a group of baker women with Ashkhen, we decided to organize the baking in our own bakery “said Anya Khanazaryan.“ Now of our six women, Angela and I are alive ... When artillery strikes began, it was impossible to describe what was going on. I was very scared. We were all scared ... One day, when they started firing, I ran to hide. Haykanoush scolded me and became angry with me: “Where are you going? This is our fight. Our children are fighting; they are shedding blood on the battlefield, should they starve?” Halfway through, scared and ashamed of what I did, I came back to continue my work. In my mind, I used to say, 'That's right, this is our fight.' And I need to say that God has kept us, because all the houses were shelled, even in our own house, the bombs were falling on us, and nothing happened to us. With the formation of regular army, Angela Jamalyan started serving in the army until 2014, first at Special Forces, and then at a military unit ... she served for 14 years. In the peaceful years she worked as a nurse in a kindergarten. "I served with the boys from my kindergarten, which I took care of."Zhenya Isakhanyan continued to serve as a typist for Avo.And the gracious grandmother Anya continued to remain a pillar of her country and home, with patriotism and the beautiful image of an Armenian woman now raising her grandchildren, impatiently awaiting the return of her positional grandchildren.I talked to these bright women, and I, too, glorified myself, thanking God that he made us Armenian and that we were born of Armenian mothers.